A beautiful day at the Cape

This past weekend we spent a beautiful day on Cape Cod visiting Erik's grandmother! We spent a few hours walking in the tidal pools at Sandy Neck Beach and then headed off to Hyannis. We had a great time visiting with Erik's grandmother and she treated us to a delicious lunch at Cooke's! Yummy!! It was a beautiful day! (plus...for some reason there was NO traffic on the Cape...it was sooo odd!) We can't wait to go back up for another visit! Here are some photos from our day...


It was very cloudy when we first arrived to Sandy Neck Beach...


...but then the blue sky came out and we had a beautiful morning on the beach!


I love how the clouds look in this picture of the dunes!


Here is a photo of Erik's grandmother's house in beautiful Hyannis, MA. I love her gardens!


We went to Cooke's Seafood for lunch in Hyannis and it was wonderful! I had fried shrimp and scallops, Erik had salmon, and Grandma had a lobster roll! Yummy! I love seafood at the shore!


Last but not least, here I am on the beach soaking up the sun! (...and getting a small sunburn!)

NC Day #5: Let it pour!!!

No trip to the Outer Banks is ever complete without an awsome thunderstorm. We were on the beach and saw this rolling towards us. I love storms! We sat and watched the rain as it creeped up the beach towards us...


...and then ran inside when it started pouring!

NC Day #2: Fourth of July

Spending the Fourth of July on the beach was amazing. We packed a picnic in our awsome new picnic bag given to me by Jay, Suzie & Patience for my birthday and headed down to the Nags Head Pier to watch the fireworks show. People all around us were setting off small fireworks and sparklers...it was quite a show!






This last photo is not the best...but it shows you the HUGE fire we saw on the 4th from our hotel balcony. Part of the salt marsh on Roanoke Island caught on fire from a spark from some fireworks...yikes!

Windy day...

Here we are in front of the Bodie Island Lighthouse.
It's not the most flattering photo of Erik and I...
we were both hot, tired, and windblown...
but it's the first one I've had to post of us in awhile!!
More vacation pics coming soon.
Oh, how I miss the beach!!

Birthday Meme...

I was tagged the other day by Cassandra for a Birthday Meme. I'm not quite sure what it means... as far as I know all you have to do is go to Wikipedia, look up your birthday, and then post 3 events, 2 births, and a holiday. Then you tag 5 friends....well, I'm leaving out that part! So, here goes nothing...

My Birthday: June 8

3 Events:

• 1783 - The volcano Laki, in Iceland, begins an eight-month eruption which kills over 9,000 people and starts a seven-year famine. (lol, thought this was interesting since Erik is really into Iceland...)

• 1912 - Carl Laemmle incorporated Universal Pictures.

• 2004 - First Transit of Venus in this millennium

2 Births:

• 1867 - Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect (d. 1959)

• 1977 - Kanye West, American rapper

1 Holiday:

• World Ocean Day

All in all it was a pretty interesting thing to do since I have never taken the time to research what interesting things have happened on my birthday!

Nags Head, NC Day #1: The Long Drive

Here are some of the MANY photos we took while in Nags Head, North Carolina this year on vacation. I can honestly say that I never get tired of vacationing there. It's such a beautiful and relaxing place!

We left Connecticut on Tuesday July 3rd at 4:15 am driving our wonderful (really!) rental car. It was a Ford Fusion and believe it or not Erik and I had a hard time giving it back to Avis when we came home!

We arrived at the Surf Side Hotel in Nags Head, NC around 3:15pm after 11 hours of rather traffic-free driving (we weren't so lucky on the drive home). Erik and I have been staying at the Surf Side Hotel since our first trip down together in 2000...yikes! We love this place and would recommend it to anyone looking for a clean, well-priced hotel on the Outer Banks.

After checking in we went out to the grocery store to stock up on all the essentials for a yummy and healthy vacation. We ate dinner outside on our balcony while listening to the waves.

Since we had such perfect beach weather this first day, I decided to take a dip in the ocean before the sun set.

Later that evening Erik relaxed while playing guitar on the balcony as the sun
set over the beautiful Albermarle Sound.
What a great start to vacation!

Where flowers bloom...

"Where flowers bloom so does hope."
- Lady Bird Johnson, Public Roads: Where Flowers Bloom

Oh how I love wisdom teeth...

Hello everyone! Sorry I havn't been writing, but as most of you know I had to have all four of my wonderfully impacted wisdom teeth out on Wednesday. Fun, fun, fun. I have spent the past four days doing nothing but icing my jaw and laying on the couch, so I am begining to feel like such a couch potato. Erik is watching the Tour de France once again this morning...and believe it or not I am starting to get sucked into it. Yikes! I guess anything can seem really interesting when you are taking a massive amount of vicodin.
Even though I have had an ice pack attatched to my face 24/7, I'm still quite sore and swollen. Erik said I look like a "cute chipmunk". Sorry, I'm not going to post any picks of me in chipmunk-mode...I don't see it as a very flattering look on me :). I'm not looking forward to going back to work on Monday with these gorgeous chipmunk cheeks either. I will have to think of a creative explanation to tell the kiddies so they are not terrified to go to the dentist. Hopefully it will be a nice easy week. It will be hard to get out of vacation mode! I will be posting some photos of our trip to NC soon. We had a great time. It was probably one of out best trips down there, minus my constant jaw pain. I will write more about our trip later...but for now, it's back to icing.